After he rounded the corner and started toward Medicine Clinic, he met more people and an air of increased tension. The tension was especially plain in the orderlies and maids. He remembered that he had forgotten to tell Snod about the roses, and considered going up to Ward B after he entered Medicine Clinic, then decided to let it slip. That would be dangerous. Even though he had his group cornered there was no reason to take unnecessary chances.
Good thing he had spent part of last evening checking up on Miss Kerr’s past. Now that he had the dope information....
Lil Parkins was the best woman he had ever worked with. She smelt people like a dog. Kind of sixth sense and she never missed. Her hunches had made his reputation.
The explosive air hung over him like a pall. Through an open door he could see Miss Roenna Kerr, her flat feet primly under her desk, her white pompadour overhanging her lean face....
He walked straight into her office and closed the door behind him. Her pen dropped from her fingers and she turned her long head. Then her face became as devoid of expression as a mule’s. Panicky and blank with fear. But her long years of training came briskly to her aid.
“What can I do for you? Is there something in the Clinic that you failed to see, Mr. Immerheld?”
“I’m not Mr. Immerheld of Cornell Medical Center, Miss Kerr. I am from New York, though, and you can be so good as to tell me,” his gray eyes narrowed and tried to make her china blue ones rise above his necktie, “how you happened to have this?”
He drew from his back pocket the doll in the blue dress and frilled bonnet, that Mattus had found in Miss Kerr’s desk, and turned it over on its stomach.
The raucous, “Pa-pa! Pa-pa! Pa-pa!” kept repeating itself slowly and insistently.
“Turn it over! Turn it over! I’ll tell you,” there was relief in her voice.